What is a Virtual PBX System?

A virtual phone system (or virtual PBX) is a relatively new type of system and refers to VoIP systems that can be installed in virtual machine hosts, such as VMware or HyperV.

These phone systems use VoIP to connect to both telephony carriers and IP phones. Virtual PBXs do not contain ISDN, PSTN, Analog or Digital phone cards. If one of those types of connection is needed a separate gateway device is required.

Now let’s have a look at why Virtual PABXs are becoming more popular.

Advantages of Virtual PBX

Reduced Hardware Requirements

In recent years many phone system vendors have produced SIP based PABXs and moved away from phone systems that use hardware modules for phones and trunks.

This has become possible because of the appearance of SIP phones and SIP trunks.

No Need For Specialised Modules

In the past, PABX phones used proprietary digital protocols (not VoIP) and the telephony carriers only supplied trunk services on digital ISDN and analog PSTN connections.

The need for these specialised modules has gone away since phones and trunks can now use VoIP and SIP.

Introduction of Pure IP-PBX Systems

The new VoIP “Pure IP” phone systems are networked based applications like any other application running on a server, which enables them to be in a virtual server environment like VMware and HyperV.

Reduced Infrastructure

The advantages of virtual machine based infrastructure are well known, but the biggest advantage is that customers do not need to buy dedicated vendor supplied hardware and provide rack space, power, and network connections.

Easier Management

A virtual PABX can be housed in an existing virtual machine host; which already has backup facilities, power and network connections.